After a full offseason, spring training, and 17 regular season games, the Pirates have finally made a legitimate attempt to solve their first base problem. There have been rumors for months about the Bucs and Ike Davis, and on Friday the speculation finally came to an end with a somewhat oddly timed April trade, announced right before the game. The Pirates sent pitching prospect Zack Thornton to the Mets and will also send a PTBNL.

Travis Ishikawa had a nice little week or so to start the year, but now that he’s cooled off it’s pretty clear that he’s not any better than his subpar track record. Gaby Sanchez is still far from a legitimate every day option against righties for a contending team. The Pirates needed to do something, and Davis is, well, something. He is certainly an upgrade over Ishikawa and a reasonable platoon partner with Sanchez. He’s got big power and has been able to get on base at a pretty good clip for the most part.

That said, there’s a reason the Mets are shipping this guy away. Davis reminds me a lot of Pedro Alvarez. He’s the kind of hitter that drives you nuts watching him – he strikes out a ton, can’t hit for average at all, and he’s a lot worse against lefties. Then he’ll go on some tantalizing stretches where he hits mile-long home runs and looks unstoppable, but quickly falls back in to a slump before the batting average climbs to a respectable number. Davis also fell out of favor in New York last year for pulling an Adam LaRoche – he was absolutely dreadful in the first half of the season last year and had to go down to the minors, but once the Mets fell out of contention and became irrelevant, he turned in to a stud (.286 AVG, .449 OBP, .954 OPS last year in 40 games after the halfway point of last season). Basically, he’s really streaky. He hit 32 homers in 2012, then hit 9 last year.

The Pirates are probably looking at this move with the hope that a change of scenery will help Davis. It’s reasonable to a degree – some guys don’t do well in New York (see Burnett, A.J.), and going from massive Citi Field to PNC Park and its short RF porch should benefit Ike. A chance to play more often may help, too – he was competing for work with Lucas Duda in New York (the Mets have finally decided to go with Duda). More likely than not, though, he’s going to continue to be a streaky hitter that strikes out a ton and occasionally launches loooong homers.

Still, though, that’s an improvement over what the Pirates have. I shudder at the thought of all those additional strikeouts joining the lineup, but the power is nice – and while Davis struggles to keep his average safely over .200, he takes plenty of walks and has always posted OBP’s over .300 – and can get it way up in the high .300’s when he’s hot. That’s very encouraging to me. Additionally, he’ll almost never have to face lefties – Gaby Sanchez will still be here (Ishikawa will be gone as soon as Davis gets to town). Davis is far from an ideal solution to the first base problem, but he should certainly improve the situation and could give the Bucs a significant boost at times.

Thornton, who goes to the Mets, was acquired by the Pirates when they traded Chris Resop to Oakland. He has pitched very well since coming over in that trade, and has started out the year very strong in Indy. He’s a reliever, though, and this is the sort of guy that makes the Pirates’ system so deep. He’s posting solid numbers in the high minors and isn’t really known as a prospect at all, because he’s just one of many others like him. Thornton could end up being good for the Mets, but as a minor league reliever that’s not an elite prospect, he’s not a lot for a team like the Bucs to give up in a trade like this. As for the PTBNL – that could be someone from the 2013 draft (I certainly doubt it would be one of the two first rounders) or something else semi-significant. It’s hard to say at this point, but I’m not going to be losing sleep over it.